San’s family journal

We attended my father’s 100-day memorial service last week. It was rather comforting for me to see that my mother was not crying at that service. I guess she has pretty much adjust to her current lifestyle without my father accompanying her day in and day out.

Mother is a tough woman and she might not know how to express her feeling most of the time. Though we hear a lot of complaints from her regarding her husband, but when my father was departing, we all realized how sorrowful she was.

Well… after seeing all that, it is easy to say but we keep forgetting most of the time – treat the persons around you nicely while everybody is still around. 

Nowadays we are seeing Grace as our kagebunshin (shadow clone) as she behaves almost like us. It is a good news as she is exploring the world as she should be. The problem is when the clone not only copies the good side of you.

Grace is rather stubborn and we have to distract her attention if we do not like her to have something. Forcing the way out of it meaning going into another round of battle. When all the patience of you has already worn out during the day, it is another taunting battle for you if you would like to engage and go against her will.

With all the news of Nurin caught the attention of the nation, I guess it would be wise to not treat our children by settling the problem with force to encourage them to stand firm on their ground though their grounds at the time being might be in the mud.

When we respect Grace’s will, most of the time we could get out of the battle field unharmed and settle down into something that everybody is comfortable with. The problem is the process of looking for the options in the midst of tension situation.  

I thought I knew this ever since but lately I kind of appreciate it more than ever. Since the day I last have an argument with my wife, I slowly realized that I am not totally doing what I preach. I used to tell my friends and wife that we are going to die one of these days and we should just appreciate whatever we have.

Since that is the case, I guess it is only logical that why bother with all the mundane issues of our life since we could have just died on the other day. Whether when you step inside the house all the things were at their rightful places, the meal is properly served, the kid is not running and yelling or standing on the chair… these are just mundane stuff. Why would I get angry because of all these things as they are going to happen in the near future if not tomorrow.

So… now I just keep reminding myself that I am just living through this life and might as well don’t let small things ruin the mood. Anyhow, I guess I should put the mood on more positive side like doing more Lord’s work or doing something more meaningful. But come to think of it, why bother?

For me, to communication is to pass the massages or ideas across to another person and the process needs to be done only once if it took place under a civilized environment. The problem is Yen is making the communication in my context a lot more difficult than I thought.

We just have an argument about an incident that we have argued before. I told her we have been through that and she said she could not recall. As I tried to refresh her memory, a lot of thing started to come in. She has lost the focus of the argument and she started to argue again from ground zero and totally missed the point where we started our quarrel. So, in a civilized context, I had to go through the communication process which I have had with her before. Oh brother, give me a break!

I always try to be a better husband as I know that I am quick to get angry. It is just really hard to control once I got involved. I guess I just have to accept the fact that she and I are communicating in two different ways and I just have to tune to her frequency or give up trying. Second thoughts, I have work on my temperament and not to start any conversation if I am irritated. Yah… I guess that will work.

Mother-in-law had a minor stroke on her left-brain last week. The cause of the stroke is rather complicated but apparently she didn’t take the stroke medicine regularly as instructed. Since the stroke was rather minor, we could not tell that she was actually having a stroke until she shown sign of lethargy and lost control of her right leg.

Thought she is not able to go around freely with a broken hip-joint, but according to my opinion, she is still able to manage the medicine that she is taking everyday and yet she left the whole medication management to her husband. I guess that is another problem to the problem that she is having as my father-in-law has a bad history of taking care of his wife. There was one time he used traditional method to treat fever on my mother-in-law while she was actually having a kidney stone that caused her great pain. What amazes me the most is that he managed to give her all sort of traditional medicines in such a short period. 

It is rather difficult to comprehend how the two old folks get together for so long as she complaints he is preparing her a lot of medicine and still she takes them and skip those that are essential. I guess that is why she needs him to keep track of the medicine she is taking. Yen also bought her few health products and she claimed that Yen told her to stop the stroke medicine while taking the health products despite of Yen is the one insisted that she should take the stroke medicine as instructed by the doctor. Man, this is tiring.  

Yesterday Grace put up her very first performance on the stage at South City Plaza. She was among the youngest performers on that day and as that was the first time for the child and parents, we were rather anxious about it. Yen was worry that Grace would cry on the stage or may be wanted to pass urine during performance or she would forget the moves and just about everything she could imagine.

We brought our budget camcorder and digital camera there and unfortunately we could not get a very good shots of Grace’s performance as we afraid that if we were to go too near to the stage, she would be distracted. Actually Grace performed almost every moves and I guess we worried too much.

It is just rather difficult to imagine a little fellow just a bout a foot in length is now performing on the stage. The feeling involved is very hard for me to convey. I guess every parent will agree with me on this.